Combat operations in Iraq are over, if you believe President Barack Obama's rhetoric. But torture in Iraq's prisons, first exposed during the Abu Ghraib scandal, is thriving, increasingly distant from any scrutiny or accountability. After arresting tens of thousands of Iraqis, often without charge, and holding many for years without trial, the United States has handed over control of Iraqi prisons, and 10,000 prisoners, to the Iraqi government. Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.
When "Kevin" joined the U.S. army nine years ago, he never imagined he'd be living as a fugitive in Canada today. In 2006, the U.S. Iraq war resister drove halfway across the United States, boarded a plane for Calgary and convinced a border agent to let him in. He's been hiding ever since.
"I don't go out to places and hang out and just strike up conversations with strangers," he says, sitting on his living-room couch. "There's too much on the line."
If caught, Kevin -- not his real name -- could be deported to the U.S. and face jail time for deserting a war he considers to be immoral.
"I'm not the only one who thinks the war is illegal," he says.
"General Petraeus is a military man constantly at war with the facts," began the MoveOn.org attack ad against Gen. David Petraeus back in 2007, after he had delivered a report to Congress on the status of the war in Iraq. George W. Bush was president, and MoveOn was accusing Petraeus of "cooking the books for the White House." The campaign asked "General Petraeus or General Betray Us?" on a full-page ad in The Washington Post. MoveOn took tremendous heat for the campaign, but stood its ground.
When former U.S. president George W. Bush descended on the Regional Economic Summit in suburban Vancouver last October, there was, understandably, no shortage of protesters, pleas for indictments and cries of "war criminal." Left out of most news coverage as well as activist communiqués, however, was any focus on another former U.S. president who was tagging along, someone equally deserving of such protest but who seems, remarkably, to get off fairly lightly these days: Bill Clinton.